


Crush

by skypirateb



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 19:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6389506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skypirateb/pseuds/skypirateb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone is not a push-over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crush

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to chellerrific for the beta.

A young, elegant woman strode down the wide avenue, her pink floral dress a bright spot in the dreary winter day. Despite her heels clicking loudly against the pavement with every step, no-one seemed to notice her. Business men looked right through her until the last moment when they swerved in their paths. Some looked around, confused about why they had suddenly changed course, but they soon shook it off and hurried on.

  
  
Opposite a large hotel constructed in the Neo-Classical style so favoured in Washington, the young woman stepped into a small café. When she removed her sunglasses, so large they obscured half her face, a waiter came rushing over to seat her. She sighed when he tried to usher her to the tables at the back of the room.

  
  
“Oh no no, this won’t do,” she said, in a soft Midwestern drawl. “I’d like a table over by the front, please.”

  
  
The waiter opened his mouth to apologise, as all the window seats were taken, but when he turned to look, the tables had emptied. He frowned. There had been half a dozen people there not five minutes ago, and now there wasn’t even a coffee cup ring on the table to show where they’d been. The woman beamed. “Yes, one of those would be perfect!” Mollified by her smile, the waiter seated her by the biggest window, took her order, and hurried out the back to bark orders at the chef.

  
  
Leaning forwards delicately on her hands, Persephone gazed out of the window at the hotel across the street. She had a clear view of the entrance, flanked by doormen, and anyone who decided to enter or exit the lobby.

  
  
She hadn’t believed her husband for a second when he said he was going to Olympus on official duty. Sure, that’s what he had written in his planner for the day, but he had been writing that in his planner a lot lately, and no-one upstairs had been able to confirm that he’d been there. She cornered Thanatos, his personal aide-de-camp, to confirm her suspicions: Hades was still courting the little Italian whore and her bastards, and he had been lying through his teeth to her to do it.

  
  
Well, no longer. Hades doubled down when confronted about his actions, but Persephone was far from powerless. Thanatos, after being ordered not to breathe a word to her, more or less drew her a diagram to explain things to her when she caught wind of the affair on her own. Loyal though he was, he disliked Hades cavorting around with mortals as much as Persephone did, and whatever he tried to pretend, he had a soft spot where the queen was concerned.

  
  
And since revenge was on the table, the Furies had been only too happy to follow her orders to ferret out where the _puttana_ was staying. When she had that information, it was laughably easy to load the gun and point it squarely at the bitch’s back.

  
  
All she had to do now was wait.

  
  
Fortunately, Hades was adorably punctual. Persephone was carefully sipping her coffee with five sugars when he came striding down the street, dressed in a pinstripe suit to blend in with all the politicos rushing around the capital. Persephone’s heart ached when she saw him. Almost four thousand years they had been married now, and she would still risk Olympus and earth for him. Every atom of her being strained with love when she looked at him. It wasn’t like he was in the habit of being unfaithful or anything; it had happened maybe three times in as many millennia… Guilt churned in her stomach. She should count herself lucky, having a husband who was so devoted to her. Maybe she should just call it quits and take up Hecate’s offer of wallowing in an ice cream induced stupor.

  
  
As Hades approached the revolving doors, two small figures burst out of the lobby. She couldn’t hear them, but she could see their bright young faces, their dark curls, their excitement to see the Lord of the Dead. It was like being doused in a bucket of ice. Seeing these children in the flesh, even from dozens of yards away, was enough to make her cold with rage. Here was living, breathing proof that Hades had taken another woman, a mortal woman, into their bed. He had touched her and kissed her and fucked her, while Persephone was alone on Olympus, dreaming about being back in his arms.

  
  
When she had first confronted him, years ago now, Hades claimed that he had been lonely, and he’d missed her, and that she didn’t understand what it was like. It was the tritest bullshit Persephone had ever had. If he had missed her, why not spirit her away from Olympus? Why not sneak into her room right under her mother’s nose? Why not just wait six measly months to have her back at his side? And why act like she didn’t miss him as well? As if his pain was somehow special and unique, giving him a convenient pass to do whatever the hell he wanted.

  
  
It just couldn’t stand.

  
  
Across the road, Hades slipped into the hotel with the children. Tears trembling on her eyelashes, Persephone dug around in her purse and pulled out a business card and a fountain pen. On the back of the card, she scrawled a message in pink ink.

  
  
_Can confirm she’s at the hotel. Fire away._

  
  
She blew gently on the ink to dry it. Jaw clenched, she twisted the card between two fingers. It disappeared. Her coffee cup jittered against the saucer as she picked it up to take a sip. It was out of her hands.

  
  
Outside, the cloudy sky began to darken. Persephone gulped down her coffee. No going back now. Thunder rumbled overhead. She clenched her hands together and dug deep inside herself to find a scrap of the righteous iron resolve she had inherited from her mother. Empathy, compassion, and mercy came much more easily to her. She didn’t like people to suffer, especially on her account, and she didn’t like to go around snuffing mortals out like a capricious child jumping on a trail of ants.

  
  
Most of the time.

  
  
There was a bright light, and an explosion. Shattering glass burst into the café. The hairs on her skin prickled as an electric charge fizzed over her. A deep bass of thunder rumbled in through her chest.

  
  
Mortals, visually and aurally disorientated, took several second to recover. Then the screams started. People behind her in the café had been cut by flying glass, and it sounded like a fire had started in the kitchen. Unscathed and shrouded in Mist, Persephone stared at the shards of glass that had landed in the dregs of her coffee.

  
  
_Look_ , she told herself fiercely. _You did this. Own it._

  
  
Mechanically, she turned her head and gazed across the street to where the hotel had stood. In a flash of lightning it had gone from modern Ionic marvel to blasted ruins. No mortal at the epicentre could have survived.

  
  
Persephone stood, brushing glass off her skirt. Sirens were screaming in the distance. She could see fires burning in adjacent buildings. The sky was still churning darkly. Time for her to go. It wouldn’t do for Hades to find her anywhere near the blast radius. She put her sunglasses back on and, after a moment of thought, tucked a $10 bill under her saucer.

  
  
Stepping carefully in her three inch heels, she climbed out of the café through the shattered window. Getting back to the Underworld quick smart was imperative. There couldn’t be any hint to Hades that she had briefly abandoned her duties to enable a homicide.

  
  
Behind the sunglasses, tears started to spill down her cheeks. She had managed to get one over on the bitch. Not even Hades would bring her back from the dead—he might want to, but his sense of duty to the governing laws was too strong. And after all, why revive a mortal when you had a goddess to warm your bed? At the very least this would disabuse him of the notion that a mortal could ever measure up to Persephone.

  
  
But her heart still broke for him, and even for the children. Her mother would have been horrified at the idea, but there it was. Maybe she was too soft for her own good. Sooner or later she would have ended up dead: she was only human, and Zeus already had her on his list. Persephone had only expedited the process. That’s what she’d tell herself, anyway.


End file.
